Previously: "Prepare to have your world turned on its head."The boy thought.

"Let me put it this way: Your information is historically right, however, some of the key facts are wrong. The Astria Porta never had the ability to transport anything through dimensions. And the Goa'uld, while evil, are no demons, although when I think of what Merlin knew about them, it's hardly surprising they were confused as such."

"According the information I have, the portals were created by the Ghoa'ul, or Goa'uld as you call them." Giles commented with a frown. Xander definitely knew something important, that symbol he'd drawn showed the fact for certain, but the term he'd used was very different than the one used by the Ghoa'ul to name the portal, the one it was named in the Council's records – Chappa'ai.

"Right." Xander sneered. "Like those parasitic worms with delusions of godhood would have the understanding or the technology to build them."

"Build them… You are saying the portals Rupert spoke of are technological?" Miss Calendar asked incredulously. "How is this possible?"

"The species that built them were called the Altera. Their civilization was so old that every other space – faring sentient race that rose after them calls them, amongst other names, the Ancients. Earth caught their attention because of the reality –warping energies present here. Though they could not manipulate those energies, they still wanted to observe and study them, so to be able to do so in peace, they banished the Old Ones."

"Ba…banished the Old Ones?" Giles sputtered. "How?"

"I don't know." Xander shrugged. "Merlin only knew the facts relating to the ancient history; he knew nothing of the details."

"Assuming what you say is true, how does Merlin tie in with all this?" Miss Calendar asked. "How would he know?"

"Because he is one of us." A disembodied voice answered. Everyone except Xander jumped up in alarm. Moments later, a being of light materialized in the room before coalescing into a form of middle – aged woman. Buffy grabbed the nearest weapon and charged, only to pass right through the woman. A couple of seconds later, a spell came from Miss Calendar, and also passed right through the woman.

'Ganos Lal." Xander said, his lips curling into a smirk. "Why are you scaring my friends? Shouldn't you be off performing witchcraft somewhere?"

The Ascended being smiled slightly. "This place looks as good as any. I'm here to deliver a warning and to offer advice. Xander, of all of Moros' creations, you are allowed access only to Avalon, and only with the goal of obtaining resources. You are not to disturb anything related with Moros' work, nor are you to tell anyone of Avalon's secrets, including its exact location. Also, should you decide to utilize our knowledge, be sure to do so as one of us would. This way, you'll have least problems in the long run."

Ganos Lal erupted into light, and the next moment, she was gone.

"What the hell was that thing, Xander?" Buffy demanded.

"That…was Morgan Le Fay."

Having the Ascended being appear in the library had helped greatly in convincing the Gang about the truth in his memories, Xander mused. Otherwise, he'd have to create something advanced to convince them. As it was, Giles had dug for information about human ascension in his books for nearly two weeks before finding a description of one. But why had she appeared at them in the first place? She could have accomplished her goals just as easily by appearing only in his mind, and Merlin had known that showing up in visible form in front of mortals was frowned upon amongst the Ascended. So what had Ganos Lal hoped to accomplish?

The boy was shaken from his thoughts by a sudden buzzing sound. Xander glanced at the devise he had left to charge up, and had only a fraction of a second to dive down before the thing exploded with a bright flash.

"Great. Just great." Xander groaned as he inspected the wreckage. "Another one bites the dust."

Xander's hopes of rapidly providing some of the almost miraculous Alteran technologies to use against the creaturs on the night side of Sunnyhell had been shot down a week later, as he'd shown the Gang a prototype of a plasma weapon. Giles had been quick to point out that such advanced weapon designs, while of potential great help, carried with them the damger of attracting unwanted attention from too many parties, and had advised a great caution with anything radically new he tried to make. And there was, of course, the fact that building anything really advanced would not come cheap.

So there he was, trying to create hand – held plasma weapons with modern Earth tech. Or more precisely, trying to make a proper power cell for the said weapon. For it to be of any use, the thing had to have more than a handful of shots, and a energy weapon of any kind with a cable supplying power would be only effective for its value to render vampires and other baddies helpless with laughter, so the Slayer could pick 'em up one by one. A task made even more difficult due to the fact his 'workshop' was, for the moment, the basement Giles' home.

Things would change once the legal stuff the Watcher was handling was done. Once he got a few designs of improvements to existing techs sold out, some money would come in, and he'd be able to build some stuff currently existing only on schematics in the memory of Miss Calendar's PC – buying a computer or recording anything on school ones was out of question, and the teacher though she owed him that much after he'd modified the thing to work several five times faster, everything he could think of without having to rebuild the thing from scratch. There was already a schematic of a much faster machine ready that was making both Miss Calendar and Willow giddy with anticipation. But getting started on building stuff was proving slower than anticipated, and Xander sometimes though things would continue to often go BOOM until he could switch from wire to crystal tech properly, something which would take a while to do.

If only things were peaceful for a change, but no, an old friend of Buffy's just had to show up in Sunnydale, only to try and feed her, plus a bunch of deluded idiots, to the Master Vampire William the Bloody a.k.a. Spike. On top of that, Ethan Rayne just had to show up back in Sunnydale, closely followed by one of the shadows of the Watcher's rebellious past – namely, the dream demon Eghyon. Although they'd managed to kill the demon by tricking him into possessing Angel, and Buffy had vented some of her frustrations on the meddlesome mage, the brief period of being possessed by the demon had caused Miss Calendar to distance herself from the Watcher, a fact the man was getting increasingly grumpy about. Xander didn't see what the problem was – it wasn't like Giles hadn't learned his lesson. It was certain the Watcher would not be summoning demons anytime in the future.

And as of a few days ago, it looked like Buffy would have to ban him from actively participating in Slayage for the foreseeable future, as, against all logic, a group of vamps had chosen to attack him, almost heedless of the Slayer, and as a result he'd taken a beating - that is, more severe than usual. Even though he'd appeared in the morning fully healed, prompting a round of research in some dusty old books about his newly acquired healing ability that rivaled the Slayer's ( not to mention some jokes about him being slow to realize, as he had been with realizing the fact he was doing complex base 8 math calculations in his head.) Rapid healing would not help him if the vamps managed to gang up on him long enough to kill him.

Xander grinned Cordelia walked away in a huff. It was Career Week in Sunnydale High, and the test result had come out just this morning. The Queen of Sunnydale High herself had been evaluated as either a 'personal shopper' or a 'motivational speaker'. The first made sense; she would be an ideal consumer adviser - what to buy and what not…but 'motivational speaker', well, that had sounded just too much off the mark not to tease the Queen C about it. When she had seen his own recommended career, she'd tried to mock him, only to have him just smile at her. After checking the other result of interest, he went to find the girls.

"Hi! Say hello to your friendly neighborhood security guard!"

Buffy and looked at each other and laughed.

"What?" the redhead managed to squeeze out.

"They just put up the assignments for the career fair, and that's what it says for me." Xander said with a grin.

"But how?" Willow spluttered as the Slayer laughed again. "What about…"

"I filled the test while trying to pretend it never happened." Xander said seriously. "I don't need to attract the attention of someone with more brains than His Trolness. Having him over my head is bad enough."

Without him even trying, Xander's school marks had suddenly soared – not exactly surprising for someone with Merlin's brains. With the high marks offending Herr Snyder's opinion of the boy, the principal was now on a 'prove that Harris is a cheater' crusade.

"What about us?" Buffy asked.

"Funny that you ask. You've been assigned to the booth of law enforcement professionals."

Buffy blinked. "As in police."

"Yup, I see polyester, donuts and brutality in your future."

"Huh." Buffy muttered, not amused. "Well, I'll just jump off that bridge when I come to it. But first, I have to deal with Giles. He's on this Tony Robbins

hyper-efficiency kick. Expects me to check in every day after homeroom." Noticing Giles carling a very large stack of books, she walked towards him. "Police?"

Lips twitching, Xander was about to follow when Willow put a hand on his shoulder.

"You didn't check to see which seminar I was assigned to, did you?"

"I did, and you weren't on the list."

"But I handed in my test! I used a number two pencil!"

"Then I guess you musta passed."

"It's not the kinda test you pass or fail, Xander." Willow said, frowning.

"Your name wasn't up there, Will." Xander's grin vanished. "Jokes aside, this test is about what we'll be doing for a living. I guess you are far too smart to need extra help about it, and someone is ready to offer you a job already."

A tiny smile appeared on the redhead's lips. "You are smarter than me these days."

"Then I suppose the test is good enough to distinguish a natural genius from a magical mistake like me."

Willow chuckled slightly. "Do you really think that? About the job, I mean?"

"Only one way to find out."

After school, there was a Scooby meeting called by Giles. Xander was the last to arrive, and sat down next to Willow and Buffy at a study desk.

"So, what's the emergency?"

"a few weeks ago, when Ford was still alive, they stole a book from Giles's Office, remember?" Willow asked. At Xander's nod, she continued. "Last night the grave of the author was raided raided. It contained a reliquary…that's a…"

"I know what a reliquary is." Xander interrupted. "Merlin knew enough of the religious practices of the time. He needed to fit in somewhat, after all."

"Right." Willow said sheepishly. "Well, the guy's name was Du Lac or something like it."

"He was a theologian and a mathematician," said Giles, appearing from behind the stacks and walking down the stairs towards them, clutching a National Geographic. "This is an article which describes an invention of his called 'The Du Lac Cross'."

"Which is more than just a fancy ornate cross, I take it." stated Xander looking at the picture of it in the magazine Giles had given Willow.

"Correct, Xander," said Giles with a serious expression on his face. "It was used to understand certain mystical texts, decipher hidden meanings and so forth."

"So you're saying these vampires went through all this hassle to get your basic decoder ring?" said Buffy, sounding unimpressed.

"It appears so." Xander said. "And they had to break into his tomb because?"

"According to this Du Lac destroyed every cross he ever made," said Willow looking at the article, "except for the one buried with him."

"Why destroy your own work?" asked Buffy.

"To prevent if from falling into the wrong hands after your death," said Xander thoughtfully. "So the vampires have a book and the cross needed to read the book…and it contains what?"

"If rumor is to be believed, then Du Lac had some very nasty rituals and magicks which he discovered by experimenting on vampires, written in that book," said Giles darkly.

"Wonderful." The boy groaned. "Why do I have a feeling we are going t find out exactly that book contains,when it's used against us?"

"Unless we preempt their plans," The Watcher said

"How?"

"By learning precisely what's in the book before they do," Giles said darkly. "Which means we can expect to be here later tonight," said Giles intently sitting down.

"Goody!" said Willow with a smile. "Research party!"

"Speaking of," said Buffy, standing up, "I really have to bail, but I promise I'll be back bright and early tomorrow and ready to slay."

"This is a matter of some urgency, Buffy," said Giles, slightly annoyed by his charge's attitude.

"I realize that," said Buffy in irritation, "you have to admit, though, I kinda lack in the book area. I mean you guys are the brains, I'd only be here for moral support anyway."

"She should go," said Willow after a moment. They had so rehearsed this moment. "Y-you know, gather her strength."

"Perhaps you are right," said Giles "there may be fierce battles ahead."

Buffy took that opening and made tracks out the door. Xander frowned. There was something fake about Willow's defense of Buffy here. He shrugged it off. There was work to be done.

Two hours later and Xander closed the eight book he had searched through and was reaching for another when the doors to the library burst open and a wincing Buffy came back in, dressed in warm clothing, ("Odd." Xander thought.) and her knee. banged up and bloody.

"Good Lord, what happened Buffy?" said Giles, standing and rushing towards his Slayer.

"Had a run in with a big one-eyed guy that tried to kill me," said Buffy, sitting down on the stairs with a wince as Giles brought an icepack from the fridge in his office for her. "Wearing this," she handed an ornate band ring to her Watcher and placed the ice pack on her knee.

Xander watched over Giles shoulder as he examined the ring with a magnifying glass…it was a fine workmanship…there were symbols engraved and they were for…

"Oh, wonderful." said Xander in alarm. Since Halloween, he'd been reading some books Giles had given him about the time period Merlin had lived in, and one of those mentioned the group using those rings. "Only these guys were missing here."

"Indeed" Giles agreed, his expression grim. "This is only worn by members of the Order of Teraka. It's a society of deadly assassins dating back to King Solomon."

"Why are they after me?" asked Buffy with a frown.

"Cause you're the scourge of the Underworld?" Willow offered.

"I haven't been scourgey lately," said Buffy doubtfully.

Giles rubbed is eyes. "I think the best thing we can do is find a secure location. Somewhere out of the way until we can decide on a best course of action."

"Okay, now you and Angel have both said to head for the hills. Are you saying that I can't handle this, that I'm not strong enough to fight these people?" said Buffy in a fit of anger.

"Buffy, these aren't vampires you're fighting," said Xander shaking his head. "This is a group of human and demon assassins who are not above using a Sniper Rifle to take you out from a distance of eight hundred yards or more. The book I read about them the first time mentions one of them taking out his target with a tank. You don't know who they are or what they are until they strike."

"So what will we do?" Willow asked.

"We find out who set the bounty on Buffy." Xander said grimly.

"Xander is correct." Giles said. "They are hired guns; if the bounty is no more, they will leave."

"Did Buffy show up this morning?"

"N-no, Xander. Why?"

"I went to check up on her, and she wasn't at home. And if I'm right, I might have talked to a Terakan."

"Good Lord! What happened?"

"It was a door to door salesman. I ran into him at the walkway, and he asked if there was someone in the house. At first, I thought nothing of it, but then I realized not even I would ignore a mealworm crawling up my sleeve."

"M-Mealworm?"

"Yup. A fat one."

"I see. Well, I've picked up a few books on the Order of Teraka, you may search for him when you have the time."

The library door opened, and the two turned to see Buffy enter the library, closely followed by a dark – skinned girl with a similar stature, something eerie familiar about her.

"Buffy." Giles acknowledged with a nod. "And your friend is?"

The dark – skinned girl spoke. "Me name is Kendra. De Vampire Slayer."

The Watcher's eyes narrowed. "Impossible. There can only be one Slayer."

"So I keep telling her." Buffy quipped.

"A Slayer is Called when the previous one dies." Xander commented. "And in the times the rules were recorded, there was no such thing as CPR."

""What are you talking… Good Lord!" Giles exclaimed, returning his attention to the dark – skinned girl claiming to be the Slayer. "If you are a Slayer, you'll have a Watcher."

"Me Watcher's name is Sam Zabuto."

The Watcher rose from his chair and stalked to his office, muttering words under his breath in an unfamiliar language that didn't sound nice at all.. When he exited, couple of minutes later, he was still angry.

"Bloody pillocks." Giles growled. „Its' true." He told the teenagers. "Kendra was Called when Buffy died in the Master's cave. Apparently, it doesn't matter that you revived Buffy a minute later."

"You died?" said Kendra, looking at Buffy.

"Just a little," said Buffy sheepishly.

"And what of you?" Kendra asked Xander. "Who are you?"

The boy sighed. "Someone who got into the wrong place at the wrong time, and found out of the reality in the world. Since then, I've stuck around, helping out when I can."

"And you allow dis, sir?" asked Kendra incredulously of Giles. "The Slayer must work in secret for security."

"Yes," said Giles, "but there have been many cases in the p-past where disaster was only averted because of Buffy's friends. Life here on the Hellmouth is not conducive to s-standard procedure I'm afraid."

"This is a mistake, she isn't suppose to be here," interrupted Buffy irately, and turned to Kendra, "Look, no offense I really don't mean this personally, but I'm not dead, and frankly having you here creeps me out just a little bit."

"I cannot just leave," said Kendra with a frown, "I was sent here for a reason. Mr Zabuto said all de signs indicate dat a very dark power is about to rise in Sunnydale."

"And what's your plan for finding this dark power?" asked Buffy angrily, "You just gonna attack people randomly until you find a bad one?"

"Of course not."

"Then why did you try to attack me?"

"I tought you were a vampire," said Kendra stoically.

"Oh, a swing and miss for the rookie," snapped Buffy.

"Don't be so sure, Buffy." Xander spoke. "I guess she saw you suck face with Deadboy."

"Deadboy?" Kendra asked, a slight smirk on her face. The Jamaican Slayer was impressed – this… boy had guessed right.

"Liam O'Connell, formerly known as Angelus." Xander explained. "A hundred years ago, Angelus angered the wrong people, and thy decided to make him suffer by restoring the soul to his original body. I've got no idea what kind of person Liam was originally, but since his arrival 15 months ago, he's done nothing but help out. Without his help, there was no way I could have gotten to the Master's lair in one piece."

"I cannot believe you," said Kendra, "he looked like just another animal when I…"

"When you what?" asked Buffy angrily. "What did you do to him?"

"I…" said Kendra uncomfortably.

"What did you do?!"

"That was a mess." Xander commented. The third Terakan had struck, but Buffy and Kendra had managed to stop her, with only one student slightly injured. "How's Oz?" the boy asked Willow.

"He'll be all right. The doctors said it was nothing serious."

"Good to know." The boy sighed in relief. "We're lucky Spike's offer on Buffy's head is small enough and we only have second rate Terakans to deal with. It could have easily been much worse."

"S-Second rate, Xander?"

"Think about it, Giles. Number one tries to wrestle a Slayer, choosing a moment when she has help. I mean, I doubt Angel would have been helpless even if he was human. Number two plays the part of a traveling salesman, and then leaves mealworms crawl on his clothes. And now we have this one, hello, an assassin who doesn't know how her target looks like? Can anyone say 'diversion'?"

"I agree." Giles said grimly. "Spike wants Buffy out of the way while he performs the ritual."

"Found somethinhg new about it?"

"Y-Yes, a a matter of fact, I have. The ritual requires the presence of the sire, and it must take place in a church on the night of the new moon."

"The new moon," said Kendra gravely, "that is tonight."

"Drusilla's sire," said Buffy, her face etched with worry. "that's Angel. Will this ritual kill him?"

"Yes, I'm afraid it will," Giles answered.

"We need to find this church. We need to find where this ritual is gonna take place," the Slayer said resolutely.

"Agreed," said Giles, looking at his watch, "we must work quickly, we have five hours before sundown."

"Don't worry Buffy," said Willow, opening her laptop, "we'll save Angel."

"Angel? But our priority is to stop Drusilla," objected Kendra.

"Like it or not, Angel is an ally," Xander pointed out "therefore we will save him."

"Look, you've got your priorities, and I've got mine," argued Buffy, "right now, they mesh. So, are you gonna help me, or are you gonna get out of my way?"

"I'm wit you," said Kendra eventually after a considering gaze.

"Good, because I've had it," said Buffy angrily, "Spike is going down. You can attack me, you can send assassins after me, that's fine. But nobody messes with my boyfriend!"

Kendra couldn't help but feel a tingle of envy to her fellow Slayer while she followed Willow and Xander into the dark streets of Sunnydale. She wasn't impressed with many things about the blonde Slayer, most glaring of which being Buffy's relationship with a vampire of all things, souled or not. The very thought of being so close to a demonically -animated corpse for purposes different than fighting made the Jamaican Slayer shudder. But for all of her failings, Buffy was getting the job done, which was ultimately what counted.

And her friends… Kendra had been always taught that having friends only served to distract the Slayer from her duties, and even worse, turned the said friends into targets for the creatures of the night. But there was no denying the benefits of having help around; the Jamaican Slayer seriously doubted a single Slayer would have been able to stop Drusilla from rising as they had just done. Not with two Terakan assassins and a vampire known to have killed two Slayers in the past in the way. And the very fact there were now TWO Slayers was because of the actions of Buffy's friends.

Kendra sighed. There was much to talk with her own Watcher about. But for now, she would keep Willow and Xander safe until they got to their homes.

Author's notes: Urgh. When I started publishing this fic, I only had the Halloween episode and a few scenes from various episodes written down. Actually getting this to look like a proper fic is proving more difficult than I tought. in the end, I settled for a form in which I only write in detail the episodes/ parts of episodes where something happens differently than in the tv series. The events that remain the same will be mentioned in passing.

About this chapter: I realize that some might be disappointed by the slow start of the technological stuff, but let's face it: the moment Xander starts churning up high – tech stuff at a whim, the focus of the story inevitably will shift to the Stargate universe, and as tempting it may be to put SG-1 between the rock and the hard place by having them come to investigate during Graduation, the character I plan to start the melding with has, to the best of my knowledge, never been used before. At least I haven't seen the said character in a crossover fic before.

Sometimes, I might have a character think unfavorably of another, and make that opinion known to the reader. This is not done with the goal to blemish either character; I hate nothing more of reading a fic where a character flaw is blown out of proportion, especially when otherwise the plot is good, like in Zeppo:Hallo. (for those loving heroic Xander stories, anyway)

And lastly the 'Xander and Cordelia checking on Buffy' thing never made any sense to me in the first place. For all the initial hostility, I can't see Xander, or even Willow, ever actually wanting her dead, so why involve her in a search for the Slayer in the first place? Mass transportation, indeed!